Hot Rod
by A.Diamond
Summary: It had been in the nineties when they'd started driving at six in the morning; seven hours later it was easily over a hundred outside, and with the blistering sun beating down on their black car, the heat was nearing deadly. Especially since the Impala's air conditioning had given up on life with a long, rattling sigh three hours before.


The Impala thundered down the endless, featureless, lifeless stretch of Arizona highway, windows cranked down and music cranked up. Despite the heavy draft being pulled through the car, the air inside was stifling. It had been in the nineties when they'd started driving at six in the morning; seven hours later it was easily over a hundred outside, and with the blistering sun beating down on their black car, the heat was nearing deadly.

Especially since the Impala's air conditioning had given up on life with a long, rattling sigh three hours before.

Sam groaned, banging his head against the metal frame of the window in frustration. He had no idea how Dean was managing to remain so unaffected by the temperature. Dean should have been just as much of a sweaty mess as he was.

Sam had long since unsnapped the first few buttons on his shirt, then all of them, then stripped it off entirely. His thin white t-shirt clung to his chest and back, soaked through, but at least the evaporation cooled him.

When it got to the point where he was considering taking that off, too, and his jeans as well, he wiped the pool of sweat from his forehead with his equally sweaty hand and said, "Dean."

"Sam."

"If you don't pull into the next damn motel parking lot, I swear I'm going to throw myself out of the car."

"That sounds like a terrible life choice, Sammy. I'm going like eighty here. But I can't stop you if you're determined."

Dean was even more insufferable when Sam was already suffering. Grumbling more, he stuck his hand out the window to feel the wind against his overheated skin. It was the best thing he could ever remember experiencing, and that was the most depressing testament to his sorry state yet.

Dean's only concession to the heat had been to roll up the sleeves of his buttoned flannel shirt. Sure, his cheeks were flushed red and his brow glistened with sweat, but he kept humming along to Metallica (badly) and drumming on the steering wheel with his thumbs (off beat) like nothing was wrong.

Sam wanted to punch him, but settled for asking, "How are you even surviving?"

"Well," Dean started, "you know." His smug tone made it immediately apparent that he was about to make Sam want to punch him even more. "I keep in good shape, eat right, drink lots, and—oh, yeah, I'm not a whiny little kid."

Rolling his eyes to avoid committing violence, Sam turned his attention back to the artificial wind whipping around his outstretched hand. It stung a bit, at the speed they were going, but the cool relief of the breeze was worth the sharp tingle of it.

He found himself wishing, for the first time in a long life of travel inside it, that the Impala had a convertible roof. Putting the top down, cooling off his head and shoulders and chest instead of just his hand, would be heaven. But it didn't, so he had to content himself with a hand.

Or an arm. They were in the fast lane, but it wasn't like there was anyone else on the road, so he leaned out a little further until his whole arm rippled with goosebumps from the blast of air. He actually had to hold back a sigh and a shiver at the contrast against his overheated skin. It was marvellous.

The rush of cool brushed just shy of his shoulder and he strained to angle it into the wind, trying to dry the patch of shirt where sweat had gathered in the dip between his trapezius and collarbone. If he could just direct the fantastic breeze inside the car, over his face and neck, he might survive. But no variation of cupping his hand or bending his arm (he was well past the point of dignity) succeeded in funneling the air in any more efficiently.

Well, there was another option. If the mountain can't come to Muhammed and so on.

Sam pulled his arm back in, undid his seatbelt, and put his arm back through the window. Then he stuck his whole head out.

It was just as glorious as he'd imagined. He didn't care his hair was flapping into his eyes and ears and nose. He didn't care that the wind dragged his skin towards the edges of his face and slapped his eyes to watering. He felt amazing.

The sweat dripping down from his forehead and chin and that little strip underneath his nose vanished instantly, either evaporated or just blasted off his face by the wind. Either way, the relief drew a happy hum up from his cooling lungs that quickly got lost in the rush of air.

Loud enough to be heard over the roaring in his ears, Dean made a choked noise from his left.

Sam glared without giving up his beautiful, beautiful breeze. "What?"

"Uh." Dean coughed, the red of his cheeks darker. Maybe the heat was finally catching up to him. Whether or not that was the case, he still found the energy to snort and say, "You look ridiculous. Get back in the damn car."

"I'd rather look ridiculous than boil to death." Sam had to yell to keep the wind from stealing his breath away, but he felt more alive than he had since the Impala's cooling system had started trying to drag him down to hell with it.

"Like a goddamn puppy," Dean muttered, though it was loud enough for Sam to hear so he had to have been trying. He fell silent after that, though, and Sam enjoyed his respite from the heat in peace.

The stinging on his face grew more painful the longer he held his head out into the wind, so he was about to drop back into his seat to give his red skin a rest when Dean grunted. Dean had many grunts: angry, tired, annoyed, sad-but-stoic. That was his frustrated grunt.

Sam looked over again, expecting Dean to make another argument, maybe about how Sam was going to get his head bashed against a semi (he'd been a little worried about that himself, but the highway was still oddly empty other than them), and instead saw Dean's left hand drop from the steering wheel onto his leg. Then slowly start creeping up his own thigh, on the outside towards the door, like he thought he was being subtle enough that Sam wouldn't see.

Before Sam's horror could kick him into action, the hand stopped just shy of Dean's crotch and squeezed into a fist. He glanced at Sam, starting guiltily when he saw Sam's irate attention on him. He turned red again, and it all clicked into place in Sam's mind.

Throwing himself against his seat back and crossing his arms, he yelled, "Cas!"

The angel appeared in the back almost instantly, looking less flushed than Dean but much, much more guilty. No doubt about it: while Sam had been roasting, Dean had been getting fanned by invisible angel wings or whatever. Angel mojo air conditioning while Sam suffered. And a little something else, too, and that was what Sam would never forgive Cas for. He hadn't ever needed or wanted to know that Dean's frustrated grunt doubled as his aroused grunt.

"I can't believe you'd do that," he told Cas. Only Cas, because he could definitely believe it of Dean.

Cas frowned at him, though it didn't erase the remorseful furrow of his brow. "If you can't stand the heat, don't set things on fire."

"That's..." Sam looked from Cas to Dean, whose guilt had turned into snickers, then back. "Okay, first of all, that's not how the saying goes. Second, what fire did I start? I didn't kill the AC!"

Cas's wrinkly forehead got wrinklier. "You disabled the air conditioning as part of your prank war with Dean."

"No." He turned his glare to Dean again. "I didn't. We haven't done that in years."

He could feel Cas's ire slipping off him and focusing on Dean, who immediately deflected with, "Oh, look! A motel!" and veered onto the exit ramp.

Sam glowered at Dean judgmentally as the Impala pulled into a parking spot just in front of the rental office. He was out of the car before Dean had even put it in park, through the door into the mercifully cool reception area. As it closed behind him, he could hear Dean and Cas starting up an argument.

"Two rooms?" he asked the bored teenage clerk, trying not to sound either angry or desperate.

"Uh." The kid looked at his tablet, then out the windowed front to the two men in the car, then back at the tablet. "I got two, yeah, but you'd be better off taking just the one. It's got two queens and I can get you a cot, uh, if you need." His eyes followed the circuit again, this time cutting in Sam—he wasn't sure which two might be sleeping together. "But our only other open room, the AC's been out since yesterday. Can't get anyone in to look at it until tomorrow."

"Oh, no," Sam said with a grin as he slid his (Gustav Lawrence's) credit card across the counter. "It's just fine, we'll take the two rooms."


End file.
